For the final day here in this media class we went to the UW Williams Conservatory here on campus. There is lots of cool plants in there to take photos of. My favorite room in there is the succulent room and the woman running it was even so nice to give us a succulent leaf to grow ones at home. Here are the last pictures I took today for my Media literacy, Blogging and Photography class.

After three weeks here staying at the UW campus HSI is over tomorrow. I cant believe it. When I first go here I was thinking ugh three weeks is a really long time. But after actually living these three weeks I realized it actually wasn’t that bad. It went really fast and now that its gone I can’t believe how fast it actually went by. It was really fun and I meet a lot of good people and have definitely made some good friends as well.

I took this media literacy class in hopes of becoming a better photographer. I have meet this goal and have learned so much more. I will take back home with me the knowledge of running my own blog and becoming more media literate. I feel like I am much more confident in my writing after this class seeing as in only three short weeks my blog has had almost 300 views already. I will remember all the fieldtrips we took in this class and how to take better pictures. I will remember all the rules of taking pictures to make them look better and more interesting.

But I also learned a lot in my physical world class. This class was called; Modern Agriculture: How to grow plants anywhere. In this class I learned how to plant the plants correctly. I learned how to make a compost pile and compost tea. I also learned that there are many different ways to build a hoop house, and many different ways to build a garden and plant.

To be honest I don’t think I have one favorite memory because a lot of the activities were super fun and I will remember them for a long time. But I do have to say that there is one that sticks out to me. My favorite time here was when we went to dinner at my Ag. Teachers house and played games and just had a really good time. I played corn hole with, now a really good friend of mine, Kelly and we beat the other team which was pretty fund. And after the dinner we went bowling and that was also very fun. We made a team of; Kelly, Riley, Kendra, Joni, and Myself. Honestly after this night I felt closer to a lot of the people I hung out with and it really helped me open up to the people I hadn’t talked to a lot yet.

During my time here at HSI I have learned a lot about myself. I have learned that when I come to college I would be pretty much okay with having a roommate, and I have also learned how to be way more independent than I thought I could be. I have also become way more outgoing and friendly than I ever have been before. It was really easy for me to walk up to someone and just start talking because we were all doing the same thing and going through the same stuff. I also feel like I have grown more confident in my self.

I think that HSI helped me realize that college is a lot of work especially when you don’t have the support ring that you need. the most important class that helped me with this was my seminar class. I think it really opened up my eyes to realize how many great people I have in my support ring and that I will do just fine in college as long as I keep my priorities strait. It also helped me kind of get an idea of what I want to be in the future.

If I could relive HSI I don’t know what I would do differently. I guess I would have to say that in the beginning I wouldn’t be so nervous to talk to my roommate. I was really shy around her the very first day but by like the third day I felt that we were becoming friends. I would also say that when other kids come to this camp in the years to come hang out in the fishbowl as much as you can because that is where you can talk to everyone and meet people and become friends with them.

When I get home from HSI I am going to tell my family about all the things we did here and about all the friends I made at this camp. I will tell them what I learned in all my classes. I will also tell kids in the grade below me that they should come here because it really was a great opportunity for me personally. I am going to tell all my friends about it all when I get home, all the friends I made and all the fun times I had here. I can’t wait to go home and tell everyone about what happened. But overall I had a great time here and I might do it again if I had the chance. But I can’t wait to go home and see my family, friends, and most importantly my dog.

The book we reviewed today in class was a children’s book called ‘and Tango Makes Three”. This book is about two male penguins in the central park zoo who raise a baby together. The baby is Tango and she is the first penguin at the zoo to have to male parents.

The reason it was censored was because of having a gay couple of penguins in a children’s book. It is considered inappropriate for children to learn about this concept at a young age. But there are some people who believe that it is okay to expose them to this subject. The children who read this are going to have to visit this topic in the future, whether it be with themselves, their friends, or with their family. It is introducing the kids to this topic in a easier way with the penguins than it would be with people.

This book shouldn’t have been banned from any public library or public school. The first amendment protects this book by saying ‘of abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press’. This means they have no right to ban this book because it is just someone speaking their mind on a certain subject that is very real world.

Me, personally, do not have that much experiences with my own school or parents banning books. In my library at school from kindergarten to my grade now we were always told that we could read whatever books we wanted to. Now the library didn’t just have a random copy of, for example, Fifty Shades of Grey laying around but we were still allowed to read upper lever books if we wanted too. As for my parents the same rule applied. The only difference was that my Mom would read the book first and see if it was too inappropriate for me to read or not. For example my sister wanted to read twilight so my mom stapled the pages together of where she thought it was too inappropriate for me or her to read. Now that we are both teenagers and understand what was happening in those stapled pages, we were allowed to take the staples out and read it again if we wanted too.

I have read six of the top 10 most commonly challenged books. I have read ‘1984, I know why the cadged bird sings, Huckleberry Finn, To kill a mockingbird, and, The color purple.’

I don’t like book banning personally, I think that kids should a right to pick which books they want to read and which ones they don’t. I also believe that parents instead of the government know what is right for their child and it is their and their kids choice for what the child can read.

I don’t think that anymore “banning” books is really possible. With movies, the internet, friends, and social media. There is no way to really stop children and young adults from reading anything.

Some media that is problematic for girls/boys are magazines, models, Instagram accounts, etc. The media says that boys should be tall muscular and handsome. They say that this is what young girls should look for in a boyfriend/ S.O. The media also says that girls should by taller and thinner that the average female in America. The average female in America today wears a size 12-16, but average models wear a size 4. The media tries to push young women to think that their body is not good enough and that they should not be average but better than average.

It is not realistic for everyone to achieve the looks of models and celebrities in the media. For it to happen everyone would look unnatural. If everyone had the same ideal body image perpetuated in the media, our society would still find something to discredit girls that still weren’t “perfect”. Our society would have more of a one-sided thought process than it does now.

My friends have been affected by media images? They are more so affected by the new “trends” that celebrities are wearing. For example like what new hair cut is everyone going for now, or what new makeup is Kylie Jenner wearing this month. My friends are rarely ever affected by the body image part of the media.

There are ways that the media can do to change the promotion of an ideal body image. They can start by promoting more “average sized” female and male models. Meaning maybe get people that are shorter or fuller in size. They need to diversify their people. Another thing they could do is start by not over photo shopping their models and celebrities. And thirdly they can change what type of news to promote. It doesn’t always have to be what new diet is going around to make you lose 10 pounds in a week. They need to start publishing more accomplishing stories that show young people that they can do something in their lives.

I, myself, can do things to promote acceptance and appreciation of unique qualities in others. I can start by complimenting people on something they are wearing or their hair style that day to make them feel better about themselves. I can also join my SPEAK club at school and help set the club up more open to body size and appreciation of all people. Lastly I can help by overall just being nicer to people and less judgmental when I meet someone.

Yesterday for class we went on a fieldtrip to the Snowy Range Mountains. The scenery here was very beautiful to look at. There was a lot of good places to take pictures and good places to set up backgrounds to pictures. Here are some of my personal favorites that I took yesterday.

Police Drama

My favorite TV shows involve police and action. One of my favorite police drama is Chicago PD. Chicago PD and other police dramas like to take the reality of being a police man or detective and try to make it more interesting for people to watch. For example, in Chicago
PD they always catch the criminal and they never have a cold case. They might bring back an old case from awhile back but they never have a new one. They also take it away from reality by the people they put in the shows. For example, in White Collar a department would not be likely to bring in an extremely dangerous con man and expect him to help them solve their cases for them. But they also make it very realistic at the same time. They make it realistic by adding in how real detectives solve their cases and how they go about catching their criminals. Directors try to sweeten these dramas up by adding romance to some of the main characters as well. This can take it away from reality and force it back into reality at the same time. Over all TV dramas can be unrealistic or very realistic at the same time.

Yesterday in class we visited the Geological museum, and Berry Biodiversity Center. It was different to take pictures inside instead of outside because of the difference in lighting. it was a lot harder to get the camera to focus on what you wanted to take a picture of. The Biodiversity Center had much better lighting than the museum so it was a lot easy to capture things inside. Here are some pictures from both the museum and the center.

Basically my media intake begins when I wake up to when I go to sleep. When I wake up in the morning I like to check my Snapchat, and Instagram accounts. I only spend about 5 minutes on both before I go on with my day. Throughout the day I check my media accounts slightly throughout the day. I like to watch shows before I go to bed and when I wake up, these shows normally account for about 20-40 minutes of my day. If it is the weekend I am usually watching shows more at night time with my family, such as movies. Checking my social media accounts is kind of automatic for me and only sometimes is it critical and thoughtful.

Not a lot of my media consumption is news. I watch the local news before I eat dinner and then sometimes in school check CNN.com in classes and or another local news website called County 10. I use these two sources because they are easy and they are what I can get access to the most. I believe that some CNN news might be bias in some ways but I feel like the local news is not bias. I can start paying more attention to when I watch the news and maybe start adding some more news media to my routine. My parents impact my news diet slightly. They some times will tell me when it is more important to be paying attention to the news then talking to my friends for 5 minutes. Other than that they help me choose which news source is the best.

A lot of my media consumption revolves around entertainment, such as TV and some of it revolves around sports. My favorite entertainment source is TV shows, movies, and reading books. I use these entertainment sources to mainly pass time when I have nothing else to do that day. I normally spend a couple hours with my media entertainment but it depends on the day. If I am busy I might only watch 20 minutes of entertainment but if it is a day off then I will most likely spend 1-2 hours on media entertainment. My media intake does not effect my social life and academic like. My parents don’t mind me watching shows/ reading when they are doing something else, but when they want to spend time together as a family they don’t like me to be using any media that takes my mind away from spending time with them. They can be more lenient now that I am older now but they still like me to separate personal time and family time to when I use media.

Yesterday, my Media Literacy, Blogging, and Photography class took a field trip to the Wyoming Tribune Eagle in Cheyenne. There we got to see how the printing press worked and what everyone does their for a job. After that tour we went and took pictures in downtown Cheyenne. Here are some pictures from both places.